Tobacco Facts.

Louis F. Bantle, who helped build the United States Tobacco Company into one of the most powerful brands in the tobacco industry, gaining an 80 percent share of the market for chewing tobacco, died Oct. 10 in Greenwich, Conn. He was 81.

The cause was complications from a long struggle with cancer, his son, Robert, said. Mr. Bantle was a resident of Greenwich and Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

Mr. Bantle retired in 1993 as chairman and chief executive of U.S. Tobacco. The company, best known for its Skoal and Copenhagen brands of smokeless tobacco, was acquired in 2008 by the Altria Group, the parent company of Philip Morris. By then, U.S. Tobacco was known as UST.

During his tenure, the company’s sales expanded tenfold, pushing it into the ranks of the Fortune 500. But it also came under fierce legal attack from antitobacco groups who accused it of concealing the dangers of smokeless tobacco and inappropriately marketing its flavored tobacco products to young people.

Louis Francis Bantle was born Nov. 22, 1928, in Bridgeport, Conn.

After graduating from the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University in 1951, he served two years in the Marine Corps, rising to the rank of captain during the Korean War.

He began his career at U.S. Tobacco in 1962 as an advertising manager, following in the footsteps of his father, Louis A. Bantle, who joined the company as a salesman in 1929 and retired as chairman and chief executive in 1972.

Mr. Bantle also took an active role in philanthropy.

Through his friendship with the Hall of Fame linebacker Nick Buoniconti, Mr. Bantle supported the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, dedicated to the search for a cure for spinal cord injuries, and its fund-raising arm, the Buoniconti Fund. The Miami Project was born after a college football injury in 1985 left Mr. Buoniconti’s son Marc almost totally paralyzed.

In 1996, Mr. Bantle founded and financed the International Institute for Alcohol Education and Training, whose House of Hope center in St. Petersburg, Russia, helped introduce the Alcoholics Anonymous treatment model to that country. He was chairman emeritus of the Alcohol & Drug Abuse Council and was a director and adviser to several residential addiction treatment programs.

He had served on the boards of Syracuse University, Fairfield University, the Taft Institute, the National Legal Center for the Public Interest and the Bruce Museum in Greenwich. Besides his son, who lives in Greenwich, Mr. Bantle is survived by his wife, Virginia, also of Greenwich; a daughter, Terri Walker of Rowayton, Conn.; and four grandchildren.

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